Chicken and Tomatillo Chimichangas

Ingredients

• 8 small skinless chicken thighs
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• scant 2 cups drained canned tomatillos (12 oz can works fine)
• 14 oz cooked pinto beans (also from can is fine)
• several large tortillas
• several ounces of grated pepper jack cheese
  
• oil, for frying
• salt and pepper

Thaw chicken. Put in a large pan, and add water to cover. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. You can go ahead and skim the schmaltz off the top if you want.
Remove the chicken, transfer to a plate, let cool, then shred. We usually use two large forks for this business.
Heat the oil in a frying pan. Fry onions until translucent, then add the garlic and spices and cook for 3 more minutes. Add the tomatillos and beans. Cook over moderate heat for another 5 minutes. Make sure to be stirring constantly throughout this whole process. It gets pretty sticky.
Add the chicken and the seasoning (salt and pepper, in this case).
Heat the tortillas in a microwave until they're very pliable. This is important. They cannot be chilly or room temperature. They must be either warm or hot.
Spoon a smallish amount of the filling into the center of the tortilla and sprinkle the grated cheese on top. It should take up about 1/4-1/5 of the tortilla.
Fold in the sides, followed by the top and the bottom. Secure with a cocktail stick or a skewer or something. This is actually sort of tricky. Just improvise.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the chimichangas in batches until they're crisp. They should get a nice golden color. If the cooked part is pretty dark and the rest of the tortilla is still white, the heat is too high. Turn it down.
Remove them from oil, drain on paper towel, and eat.

Thoughts: Absolutely delicious. I think they could have used a little more salt (possibly in the form of chicken stock). They were pretty easy to make though. I think we should have gotten bigger tortillas. We got small ones, but like, fajita or burrito-sized tortillas would have been better. It was pretty difficult to get them to fold up completely, and even more difficult securing them with a skewer or cocktail stick. Just be prepared for this. They are delicious for breakfast also. Also, we had WAY more filling than we knew what to do with. We only had enough tortillas for half the filling. I would go ahead and use fewer chicken thighs. You could probably go ahead and cut that number in half and you would be fine. Also Dan thought it could probably use some more cheese. He also thinks a mole sauce would work well with it. We actually have some mole sauce in the back of our fridge, but at this point, I wouldn't go near it. Cilantro would also be a good addition. Dan also says maybe we could put zucchini in it, but I'm not convinced.

Disaster Index: 1/10